


Fight for This

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Original Work
Genre: Non-Graphic Violence, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: They meet over the Bone Lord's corpse.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).



Astrid was seventeen, a warrior and queen-to-be, when Undead started appearing again. Well, the royal advisers were somewhat unsure when exactly the Undead came back, because in full armor you couldn't see their fully white eyes and were likely to assume that any impact received was nonfatal due to the sheets of metal between your weapon and their vital regions, but reports of men walking with their heads chopped off made their way back to the capital by her seventeenth birthday. The reappearance of monsters from their oldest stories could only mean one thing; a new Bone Lord was rising.

The mission was simple: go east, towards the barren lands, as fast as possible; relieve any villages under Undead siege; burn any Undead bodies as well as those they had killed to make sure they stayed dead; kill the Bone Lord. Astrid and her companions set out at dawn.

Roughly a day's travel away, a tale of devastation was told through towns. Blood coated the streets, windows were shattered, and what few bodies remained were mauled beyond recognition. After the fourth town, Astrid vowed that she would kill the man who did this.

***

The Bone Lord's keep was the worst possible scenario for a storming, with the surrounding land being the kind where nothing could ever grow and the halls inside being dark and twisting, filled with the Undead and dark magic. By the time they reached the innermost sanctum, they had been traveling for five days straight and the Bone Lord was already dead at the feet of a young girl.

The girl didn't move as they approached her, hands bloody and her knife still embedded in the dead man's chest, barely breathing until Sigune touched her shoulder. Whatever happened next was too fast for anyone to make out; in the space of a second, the girl moved from next to the body to the rear wall, gray eyes looking at them warily. Grunhilde laughed. "Let's keep this one."

"What shall we call her?" Astrid asked.

"Arda," the girl said in a tone that implied she would respond to nothing else, and that was that.

***

The Knight's School was loud, chaotic, mostly male, and a place where Arda faded into the scenery. She was a girl, the smallest in her class, with completely unremarkable features and a quiet voice whenever she spoke. In other words, she was completely forgettable.

Forgettable, at least, until they moved from academic and diplomatic studies to more violent pursuits. Arda's lack in size was made up for in speed and knowing where to hit to make what strength she could muster count. Her tendency towards silence hid a mind more skilled at the art of war than almost any her professors had seen.

When asked how she got those skills, Arda shrugged. She was a Daughter of the Wind, born in barren lands where every day was a battle against nature. She had watched everyone she had ever known die at the hands of men whose faces she couldn't see. She had killed the Bone Lord with nothing but a knife. Combat prowess seemed like a natural consequence.

***

For a decade, life in the capital was calm. King Arthur died peacefully in his sleep; Astrid quietly took up the heavy crown. Arda graduated the Knight's School two years early and at the top of her class, then faded into the background behind Astrid with the bloodred cloak of a Queen's Guard on her shoulders. Princess Reyna was born, a girl with her father's eyes and mother's spirit. People died, children grew up, and the Undead stayed gone for ten long years.

When they came back, they didn't waste time attacking the barren lands. Instead, the army of white-eyed, impossible to kill warriors rose out of the forest next to the capital. It took four hours for them to storm the castle, another to kill every Queen's Guard with Astrid.

 _At least,_ Arda thought with some satisfaction, _they went down fighting._ The scene of the battle was strewn with corpses, many of them starting to stand again as Grunhilde started firing enchanted arrows, designed to kill the Undead permanently, towards them. An Undead woman with dark hair and gray eyes reached towards her almost gently; Grunhilde put an arrow into her chest.

Bodies would have to be burned tomorrow, battlements rebuilt, someone to aid the new queen found; Reyna was barely six now, and many rulers three times her age were known to crack from the pressure. The first necessary task in Arda's head was none of those; there was a new Bone Lord, and she was going to kill him. For her queen, for her family, maybe for herself, but this necromancer would die publicly and painfully. Carefully, she walked to the stable and mounted the fastest horse; it was time to start moving.


End file.
